


Family Man

by KelpietheThundergod



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Dean-Centric, Gen, Post-Episode: s14e03 The Scar, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, episode coda, i tagged this gen but there's a little bit of implied deancas, implied OCD-tendencies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 04:12:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16442747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelpietheThundergod/pseuds/KelpietheThundergod
Summary: "You’re just like him."In that moment, it had felt like nothing could be worse. But at least the pain of those words was sharp and quick, and got him out of his spiral. A punch that he couldn’t exactly roll with, as it cut to deep for that, but the hits stopped coming after "Michael hurt you. He hurt me too."He did get punched in the face a couple times right after. But he deserved that anyway.The pain at home is different. More like being submerged all over again, and every time he reaches the surface, spluttering and gasping, the next wave comes, powerful and acidic.





	Family Man

 

 

_I am what I am_

_A family man_

_Mother, father, brother_

  


_You’re just like him._

In that moment, it had felt like nothing could be worse. But at least the pain of those words was sharp and quick, and got him out of his spiral. A punch that he couldn’t exactly roll with, as it cut to deep for that, but the hits stopped coming after _Michael hurt you. He hurt me too._

He did get punched in the face a couple times right after. But he deserved that anyway.

The pain at home is different. More like being submerged all over again, and every time he reaches the surface, spluttering and gasping, the next wave comes, powerful and acidic.

Every time he gets order into his kitchen, puts stuff back where it belongs so a spike of anxiety doesn’t shoot through his chest when he reaches for the salt only to find its space empty, someone goes and messes it up again. Because there are so many _people_ here now, people he doesn’t know. And they either don’t notice there’s order to the place or don’t care.

Dean’s not an authority figure to them, that’s _Sam_ . No one listens when Dean tells them himself. And everything is so goddamn _messy_. Dean cleans the counters, and then an hour later there’s crumbs again. Rings of water where someone put down a glass that was too full.

And then some stuff is just _gone_.

Someone raided Dean’s stack of tiny marshmallows that he’d hid behind the canned peaches.

Dean checks his emergency food supplies, and they’ve either been moved or thrown away.

His favorite spatula has a distinct burn mark.

Other people are cooking in his kitchen now, making food that Sam eats, doing everything wrong, and Dean hates it.

Sam, usually so sensitive to noise, seems to be able to sleep perfectly fine while Dean tenses every time there’s footsteps, flinches at every door that gets closed a little too forcefully. There’s no quiet and there’s no peace. Every time Dean thinks he’s found it, it’s over before he can even try and wind down a little. It’s like there’s always someone watching, some coming in and interrupting, uncaring for his presence. Driven by his longing to let off steam, he tries the gym, the shooting range, but in the end always finds it impossible to carve out a space for himself.

People look at Dean weird, and he doesn’t want to talk to anyone, and he retreats, and retreats, and retreats.

He ends up in the garage.

Sometimes there are people there too, but they never stay, and they leave him alone. On his back underneath Baby, her wheels flanking him left and right, they don’t even notice him. His heart rate settles, his hands steady, his head clears. Dean takes his time working on her, gentle and patient. He doesn’t want to think about what he’ll do when he’s done. When there’s nothing left to check over or clean, when he discovers there’s no faulty parts to replace because they’re all working as they should.

Sam comes to prod at him a couple times, with his pushy shoulders and worried eyes. He says things like _you can’t live in the garage, Dean_.

Dean isn’t, not exactly. He comes to the war room when there’s stuff to discuss, he showers, and he gets his coffee from the kitchen. He’s been catching his four hours in Baby’s backseat though. It’s the only place he feels he can let his guard down enough to close his eyes.

The garage is spacious, but it’s a space he can control. And it’s comfortably far away from all those other spaces where people are doing things to his home without asking, changing shit and taking stuff away.

Dean’s washed Baby just yesterday, but he does it again. Extra slow. It’s soothing, to rub the soft sponge over her, soothing to them both.

One of the mugs in Dean’s kitchen, the white ones with the red brim, has had a chip in it for a while. Dean always meant to fix it, but the piece that had broken off got lost, so he kept it the way it was. But during the weeks he’d been gone, another chip got in it. That piece got lost too, and Dean was there just in time to watch someone try and throw the whole mug away.

Sam had to come and break up the shouting match that happened then. Well, mostly it was just Dean shouting. That poor guy with the mug in his hands was too busy staring at Dean like he was insane.

Dean got to keep his mug—it’s in the garage now, with his Baby and his blanket and his thermos filled with coffee—but people look at him now like he’s some nagging wife, or like they think Michael damaged more of the merchandise than Sam is willing to admit to them.

Rinsing out the sponge, Dean’s stomach growls. Sam came in earlier—three hours ago? Five?—and like, hovered. _There’s stew for dinner. The kind you like, with lots of beef_ . Sam was wearing his hopeful shoulders, and probably also his hopeful hair. It all melted away into exasperation quickly. _I don’t get it. Why won’t you even try and make nice with these people? This isn’t like you._

Dean kept his eyes on his oil-stained hands. He’d seen the tears in Sammy’s eyes when he’d confessed about the drowning, about his crippling inability to stay above the surface. He doesn’t want Sam to feel like that again. If that means Sam will be angry with him, then so be it. That’s better than him worrying, because people worrying about Dean always leads to them getting hurt.

He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt.

But they do, and then somehow, it’s always Dean ending up doing the damage.

Sam—and that godawful beard—had finally left with a huff, clearly disappointed. Dean thinks maybe it’s late enough that everyone’s called it a night, so after hosing Baby down and putting his flannel back on, he makes his way to the kitchen.

The hallways are brightly lit and deserted. The kitchen is dark.

Dean’s steps slow as he approaches it, and he hesitates on the threshold, peering inside.

Judging from the little he can see, it looks reasonably clean and orderly. But his heart is pounding, his shoulders slumped, his eyes are darting around. He’s going to have to flip on the light. Cross the floor. Open the fridge. He feels so _empty_ , inside, so hungry. But he can’t make himself enter. His hands won’t stop their nervous fiddling. His feet won’t move.

He could push past it if it was just fear. He’s had to push past that his entire life.

Dean takes a step back from the kitchen, defeated. Maybe he’s not even hungry. Maybe the acid churning in his guts isn’t hunger pains.

Maybe it’s his shame.

He’s about to turn around and flee when there’s footsteps from down the hall and then Cas rounds the corner.

“Dean?” He asks, somehow sounding confused as if he hasn’t just caught Dean red-handed. Cas falters, comes to a stop a couple feet away. “Are you alright?”

They haven’t seen each other much. They haven’t really talked. The kid has come down with a cold or something and Cas has been taking care of him. And Dean stomped on his stupid maternal urge to check on Jack as well, and his even stupider urge to be near Cas, and stayed the fuck away. Obviously, he’s no good to anybody right now.

“What’s wrong?” Cas asks, and Dean isn’t even looking at him, but he can hear Cas’s frown, hear the worry that Dean doesn’t deserve. Dean misses him and he misses Sam. “Are you hungry?”

Dean’s still staring into the dark of the kitchen, but now the dark gets blurred by tears. _Yes_ , he wants to say. _Please give me something_ —anything. _Make it go away._

But when Dean says Yes, bad things happen. People get hurt. He can’t control it, he’s too weak. So laughably, shamefully weak.

The one thing he can do, to keep his family safe, is to keep his mouth shut.

He turns and starts back the way he came, back to the garage, shoulders curled over his chest.

“Dean!”

His throat burns. So do his eyes. His mouth quivers.

But Cas doesn’t follow him, too respectful of Dean’s privacy. And that’s good, because Dean’s sure he would have crumbled. And it’s bad, because three times now, Dean’s proved that he breaks easy under torture, and when it happens again, he doesn’t want to take anyone down with him.

Curled up on his side on Baby’s backseat, hidden under his blanket, Dean thumbs through his camera roll. He’s taken pictures of the few photos he owns, for safe keeping. Sometimes he looks at them, driven by the compulsion to check if he remembers right.

There’s one of the photos Dean cherishes the most, one of him and Sam as young adults, just being brothers. Then there’s one of Dad, and Dean thumbs past it hastily, feeling like he’s about to puke after all.

Then there’s one that’s just Mary with little Dean and baby Sammy. Dean stares at it, the brightness of the screen in the otherwise dark garage making his eyes water.

Dean had always wanted to help. In the kitchen, with Sammy. Mom gave him his own little apron, and let him dry the plates when she did the dishes, and showed him how to feed Sammy. Dean loved it.

_When I grow up, I wanna be a Mom like you!_

Dean thinks maybe Mary’s smile had faltered then. Only later,  when she and Dad fought and Dean went to comfort her, did he learn she was unhappy.

_Sweetie, you wouldn’t be a ‘Mom'. You’d be a ‘Dad’._

Dean remembers how he’d shaken his head. He’d loved his Dad to bits, but he didn’t want to be a Dad himself. Dads didn’t cook and didn’t have babies. They were out working all day long and sometimes they got angry and stayed away from home a couple days.

_Wanna be a Mom!_

Mary had ruffled his hair then. Dean’s not sure what happened next, but he thinks he had pie for lunch.

Dean shuts off the screen, blinks in the sudden darkness.

It’s like how he’d felt standing in front of the stove in some run-down motel kitchen for the first time, Sammy tugging at his sleeve and crying while Dean tried to figure out how to heat up a can of SpaghettiOs without burning them or himself. It’s like him shaking his head when Dad put a shotgun in his hands for the first time.

_It’s too heavy!_

_It’s too heavy!_

But Dad didn’t take it back.

The hinges creak when Dean throws Baby’s door open. He stumbles and flips the lights back on, dry heaving, shivering. Then he grabs the bucket again and fills it with hot water, and puts soap in the water, and plunges the sponge in the water.

He washes the first car he sees, and the one after, the one after. A few are covered in road dirt, splashed with mud. Every time he disrupts the water, it makes waves inside his bucket, tiny little waves.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> title and lyrics from [the fleetwood mac song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3En4wVhk6U)
> 
> find me on tumblr at [cuddlemonsterdean](http://cuddlemonsterdean.tumblr.com/)
> 
> comments make me super happy!! :D


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